Skip to Main Content

AP Literature: Poetry: Herrera, Juan Felipe

Poet

Juan Felipe Herrera

Bio

"The son of migrant farm workers, Herrera was educated at UCLA and Stanford University, and he earned his MFA from the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His numerous poetry collections include 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can't Cross the Border: Undocuments 1971-2007, Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems (2008), and Border-Crosser with a Lamborghini Dream (1999). In addition to publishing more than a dozen collections of poetry, Herrera has written short stories, young adult novels, and children’s literature. In 2015 he was named U.S. poet laureate.

In a 2004 interview at CSU-Fresno, Herrera noted the influences of three distinct Californias—the small agricultural towns of the San Joaquin Valley he knew as a child, San Diego’s Logan Heights, and San Francisco’s Mission District—on his work: “all these landscapes became stories, and all those languages became voices in my writing, all those visuals became colors and shapes, which made me more human and gave me a wide panorama to work from.” Influenced by Allen Ginsberg, Herrera’s poetry brims with simultaneity and exuberance, and often takes shape in mural-like, rather than narrative, frames. Critic Stephnen Burt praised Herrera in the New York Times as one of the first poets to successfully create “a new hybrid art, part oral, part written, part English, part something else: an art grounded in ethnic identity, fueled by collective pride, yet irreducibly individual too.”" from Poetry International Archives

Poem: Almost Living' Almost Dyin'

Almost Livin' Almost Dyin' 

Related Poem Content Details

BY JUAN FELIPE HERRERA

for all the dead

                                                                                         & hear my streets

with ragged beats & the beats

are too beat to live so the graves push out with

hands that cannot touch the makers of light & the

sun flames down through the roofs & the roots that slide

to one side & the whistlin' fires of the cops & the cops

in the shops do what they gotta do & your body's

on the fence & your ID's in the air & the shots

get fired & the gas in the face & the tanks

on your blood & the innocence all around & the

spillin' & the grillin' & the grinnin' & the game of Race

no one wanted & the same every day so U fire &

eat the smoke thru your long bones & the short mace

& the day? This last sweet Swisher day that turns to love

& no one knows how it came or what it is or what it says

or what it was or what for or from what gate

is it open is it locked can U pull it back to your life

filled with bitter juice & demon angel eyes even though

you pray & pray mama says you gotta sing she says

you got wings but from what skies from where could

they rise what are the things the no-things called love

how can its power be fixed or grasped so the beats

keep on blowin' keep on flyin' & the moon tracks your bed

where you are alone or maybe dead & the truth

carves you carves you & calls you back still alive

cry cry the candles by the last four trees still soaked

in Michael Brown red and Officer Liu red and

Officer Ramos red and Eric Garner whose

last words were not words they were just breath

askin' for breath they were just burnin’ like me like

we are all still burnin' can you hear me

can you can you feel me swaggin' tall & driving low &

talkin' fine & hollerin' from my corner crime & fryin’

                                                                            against the wall

 

almost livin' almost dyin'

almost livin' almost dyin'

Work